Author
Topic: What will SimpleDesk 1.0 feature? (Read 44568 times)

Gruffen

Even at this early stage, we've been asked what SimpleDesk will feature, and the manner in which we will be releasing it.

Our style is very much being geared to an incremental style - we aren't planning to do mammoth releases every 6-12 months with many new features, that seems far too long for us.

While the exact release cycle we're planning on is not entirely certain, we are planning for shorter than that, and for each release to be a few new features on the previous one. So, as a result 1.0 won't have all the bells and whistles you might expect from a fully featured helpdesk, but in fairness, we'd rather give you something very fundamental and core to work with, while we work on adding the really neat stuff in 1.1 and beyond.

Without further ado, I present what we'll be issuing in 1.0.

Ability to post, edit, reply, close tickets as well as displaying tickets and seeing a list of all the tickets available

In all honesty, this is pretty much what the helpdesk is - couldn't really have a 1.0 without the basic fundamentals

Ticket <-> Topic management

One of the most hotly requested features when we first asked what people would want is the ability to move tickets into topics and vice versa. All too often a ticket will be posted when it would be better being put in the public board for discussion, or a public topic has been posted with sensitive details that really should be handled in a ticket that the staff can resolve.

This would be a one-click operation that would simply move an entire thread to the helpdesk, or repost the entire ticket to a thread of your choice.

Shut down forum component

One thing we're keen to provide is what can look like, and function like, a standalone help desk - you would be able to close down the entire forum-specific code and simply have access to a functional, viable helpdesk, albeit one that states it is powered by SMF.

Urgency levels

Tickets can have 6 levels of urgency: Low, Medium, High, Very High, Severe, Critical. The ability to raise a ticket's urgency is permission controlled, as is the ability to use the higher levels of urgency - meaning that regular staff could be allowed only up to High, with supervisors or team leaders being able to raise it higher.

Assignments

The ability to be able to assign a ticket to a given user, such that they could be given ownership of a ticket and it would be prioritised on their display as that it was assigned to them.

File attachments

The ability to attach one or more files to a ticket so staff can utilise that information. Permission driven so can be disabled upon request.

Permissions

Not all users are going to be helpdesk agents, nor are all users going to be allowed to access the helpdesk. Access to the helpdesk is permission controlled by usergroup, as is the staff view of the helpdesk.

Mod Management Page/Back-end Administration

As ever, with the level of data that will be applicable, there will be additional areas added to the Admin panel in SMF, for managing the Helpdesk:

Gruffen

I should add that while the above is what 1.0 will feature, we've already discussed what is very likely to be in the next version or two, and as we draw closer to 1.0, I'll also be revealing what we'll be putting in 1.1 - our goal is very much an iterative evolution rather than big jumps